Would my Prius make it across the country?

Consistent highway driving is the easiest thing on the battery. I would probably try to pick a route with the least amount of mountain grades as that can be punishing on the battery.

 

How long are you in New York? My experience is the battery dies from non use. If you are in NY and it is idle for a month, I would worry.

Be gentle in the Rockies, use B mode from the top of any downhill over 600 feet tall. (Donner Summit to Reno, and in Wyoming)

(From Reno to Salt Lake, you may find that Elko is the only "service" enroute. Do all you can in Reno and in Elko. Get gas in Wendover if you are under half full. The NV state motto is "No Services" )

If you are awake in the Bonneville Salt Flats, admire the Tree of Utah. Metaphor: The Tree of Utah - Wikipedia No, I do not understand, either.

I have only been beyond SLC on I-80 once, moving to MS, so I have no real advice.

 

As I see it, unless you have torn apart a pack before and swapped out a module or three, you don't have any cheap options. Every option beyond this would be $1500 or more to have someone deliver and install a rebuilt pack to wherever you get stranded - if you are unable to drive it once a cell in a module fails.

Do you have any other cars you can drive? Can you rent a non-hybrid from a close friend or relative? These are better options.

But chances are you won't have any problems. Just don't let your Prius sit unused for a long time because self discharge of weak modules would be the most likely reason your pack would fail as JimboPalmer just mentioned.

 

You see wild battery lifetimes on taxis, because they drive all the time, no rest.

 

Yours is 11 years old with 120k miles. A few years ago, Consumers Union released the results of their Prius battery study, which was showing replacement rates around 4 percent (one car in 25) by year 11, rising slightly to 5 percent (one car in 20) by year 12. At the time, they didn't have figures for years beyond 12. Presumably the rate continues to rise.

So, your probability-adjusted battery risk is probably about $125 ... what you'd end up paying your bookie at the end of your successful trip, if you made a 24-to-1 bet on a $3k battery replacement.

I sold my 2001 after a collision when it had 15 years, 232,000 miles, and the original battery. The buyer drove it from Indiana to Colorado and then changed the battery.

-Chap

 

When you say you do maintenance often I'm assuming it does not include battery maintenance such as using a Prolong battery maintenance system. That really helped relieve our apprehension this summer as we were going coast to coast. With your car being two years older it might be worth a look to see if you can buy a harness and borrow a Prolong system before you go. If you plan on keeping the car long-term you would probably be better off using the $600+ complete Prolong system purchase price toward the price of a new battery.

If your state of charge screen isn't fluctuating wildly when you start out in the morning you're probably ok. Our 2008 would be up near the green when we would start the car in the morning and be down in the purple within a block. The Prolong system stabilized it and we had no problems from here up to Salt Lake to North Carolina and back.

How old is the 12v battery? A relatively new one can prevent a lot of other problems from happening to the car, things like overworking other systems to keep the 12v charged up.

fotomoto is correct. Open highway driving seems to be quite easy on the car.

 

Battery degradation is based on the age not the amount miles. You can drive indefinite miles as these cars are designed to be constantly driven to get the best battery life out of them. It's not hard to rack up 400,000 miles on a Prius in a short amount of time in just 5 years still with it's original high voltage traction battery battery. These cars are commonly used by Taxi fleet companies and even used as escort pilot cars. If you neglect and let these cars sit for a long period, the battery can deteriorate and loose it's capacity much faster. Given the age of your car, is about near that time to for a replacement soon or you can get it the battery pack balanced and reconditioned. The only way to tell how much life you still have is hook up TechStream and take a look at the voltage and ohm resistance of all 14 blocks. Rapidly charging up to green bars and rapidly dropping in discharge are characteristics of a weak battery back. Your car will light up like a Christmas tree once that day comes before you know it. If any one of those 28 cell modules becomes weak, can throw the whole pack out of balance.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

If your fan is coming on in The summer, have you cleaned the HV fan?

If your ever interested in meeting other members, we have some meet ups:

Possible Monthly install meets. Bay Area-Fremont

@SFO and I share the Prolong setup . Maybe we can be talked into sharing .

Good luck with your cross country trip. I'm originally from PA and have done the I-80 cross country trip in a U-Haul. Enjoy the trip in your Prius .

 

The heat is definitely the enemy of the battery. If you can't get it in a garage I think the combination of time and heat will probably cause a failure sooner rather than later. Those 100+* days really take their toll if the car is outside sitting in them. You're welcome to come on down and use my Prolong system here in my garage. You'll need a harness (I don't want to take the harness off my own car since I paid to have it installed) but it's a bit far from where you are. You're better off sweet talking Ray and SFO up your way.

As for the technical side of things (testing, readings, etc.) I'll have to defer to others around here. I'm not knowledgeable about that stuff. The few things I can do are very simple and people with a lot of experience with our Prii have made those few things very easy for me to do with their excellent advice and directions.

 

Installing the harness isn't bad. The pictures on Hybrid Automotive 's website make the harness install very easy.

Once the harness is installed, the process is plug and play.

 

The more the merrier !

We don't mind sharing (particularly knowledge).

Keep an eye on the thread I linked for updates on the next meet up .

 

I think it definitely helped stabilize the rapidly changing state of charge of the batteries. The battery wasn't draining as quickly on hills and the gas engine wasn't coming on as often. It gained a few mpg over the same stretches of road but I think most of that was due to a new 12v, plugs, etc. put in during the 120k service.

Otherwise, I see it as maintenance like an oil change. I think keeping the cells balanced increases overall capacity enabling the system to work a little more smoothly but it won't actually fix a bad cell. It should keep a weak one from failing as quickly as it otherwise might, though.
Not necessarily something I felt but I did see the improvement on the state of charge screen.

 

Yeah but I do advise people to purchase the real thing from Drew Technologies as its only $495 compared to the full complete Techstream that runs $5,799 that comes with a Panasonic Toughbook. MongoosePro Toyota 2

The ones on ebay and amazon are are counterfeit cables which can potentially damage body control modules and ecus as they are of much lower quality. You can still use them for diagnostic as that's about all you can use them. use at your own risk.